“Factor ten and continuous,” Mironova said, and the image panned out slowly to reveal winding streets full of ornate and intensely appealing structures as far as the eye could see. Attenuated spires spun out above gigantic wasps’ nests and what looked like cross sections of giant ammonites and stairways out of an Escher print going up and down simultaneously in dizzying profusion.
Murmurs of amazement rippled through the briefing room and, undoubtedly, around the bridge and down the corridors to private quarters, off-duty areas, and engineering (“Oh, look at that one!” “Wow, have you ever—?” “Does that coil lead up to that parapet or … no, wait, it goes down and connects to that spiderwebby thing …”). As biologically primitive seeming and perhaps unattractive to humanoid eyes as the Deemanot might be, their cities were just the opposite.
“Live feed off,” Mironova said crisply, then waited until everyone’s eyes were on her. “Wanted you all to see that, and feel free to observe the live feed at any time … from here. I know it’s tempting to want to make their acquaintance in person, but it’s not to happen on this mission.”
It was at this point that Mikal tilted his chair forward with a bang and stormed out of the briefing room. Saavik looked to Mironova, who shook her head slightly. Let him go.
“Perhaps,” Mironova went on as if there’d been no interruption, “if we’re all very good and bring Starfleet back some pertinent data about the plant life—about which Lieutenant Saavik will enlighten us momentarily—we’ll be first in line to come back another time. Lieutenant?”
Saavik returned to the data the earlier probe had gathered.
“In addition to limiting temperature and climatological variations, the planet’s anomalous axial tilt has resulted in, for the most part, fewer variations in plant life than might be expected on a typical Class-M world.
“However”—the readings she pulled up this time made her teammates sit up and pay attention—“the original orbital probe picked up traces of some unidentifiable plant life in several regions. Not only are these flora found nowhere else on Deema III but in these specific regions, but they are unknown anywhere within explored Federation space.”
“Sir? I’ve seen readings like that before.” The eldest of the team, a grizzled Terran named Palousek, had his hand raised as if he were in school. “Long-range probes into the Beta Quadrant recorded similar spectra in the first systems they approached.”
“But what are they doing here?” someone else demanded. Esparza, Saavik recalled, another of the Terrans, young, argumentative, but also, according to his file, intuitive and very bright.
Ships’ logs and personnel files indicated that the Terrans liked to think out loud, disagreeing with each other until they had examined all aspects of a problem and drawn conclusions. It was as valid a scientific method as any. Saavik glanced in Mironova’s direction and the captain nodded, as if to say, Let them have at it!
“Maybe someone from the Beta Quadrant came bearing gifts.” This was Jaoui, youngest of the Terrans, and surely another female Mikal would have found beautiful, Saavik thought, if he’d stayed around long enough to notice her. Her voice was calm, but her pale eyes flashed with fire whenever she argued a point.
“Or just tracked them in on their shoes!” the last of the Terrans, Cheung, said dryly, her otherwise pretty face drawn into a mild sneer.
“Yes, but the distances involved—” Esparza began.
“For us, maybe,” Jaoui cut across him. “There are far more advanced species that could have—”
“But why?” Cheung demanded.
“Could be something else entirely,” Palousek said calmly, refusing to raise his voice to their level. “Just because the readings look like something from the Beta Quadrant …”
“They could as easily be the result of distortions or artifacts in the atmosphere,” Ta’oob, the Fabrini said, speaking for the first time.
This went on for some minutes. Then Ensign Graana had a question. “Are there visuals from the surface?”
“Negative,” Saavik said, and the rest of the team simmered down and paid attention. “The orbital probe was able to gather unusual spectral readings but without ground-level detail.”
“And that’s why we’re here,” Mironova interjected, making it clear that discussion was at an end. “We’re to locate and collect these oddities, catalog and study them. That’s in addition to standard geology and biota surveys. Thank you, Saavik, I’ll take it from here.”
Mironova pulled up a series of topographical maps.
“Currently it’s the dry season in Biome 1.” She indicated a vast expanse of open grassland, dotted with occasional volcanic outcroppings. “You all know the drill. Set up a base camp and measure out a perimeter of one day’s walk, then work inward until at least one specimen of every rock, soil type, and growing thing inside the circle has been bagged, tagged, and beamed up to ship’s labs. We’ve a cross section of biomes in other terrains and climates in which to do the same. No jungles or tundra, but plenty of mild weather, and enough variety to entertain everyone, I hope. Fleet’s given us no specific timetable, so with luck we can gather up a sample of every weed and daisy that long-range scans tell us doesn’t belong there and try to figure out where it’s from and how it got where it is. Any questions?”
Silent shakes of the head indicated there weren’t any. Mironova looked pleased.
“Engineering tells me we should make orbit in three-point-four-days’ time. Anything occurs to you in the interim, you bring it to me. Until then, light duty, play nice, and first round at end of shift is on me. Dismissed.”
Laughter and chatter drifted down the corridors from the mess hall every night, reaching Saavik’s acute hearing as she oversaw the labs, often taking over a shift from a grateful crew member in order to have a lab to herself.
Not surprisingly, the loudest voice was Mikal’s, though he had some competition from Esparza, who was known to sing Klingon arias when he was in his cups. Tonight’s rendition of “Melor Famagal’s Lament” had been Saavik’s cue to bus her dinner dishes and slip away unnoticed. They would make orbit sometime tomorrow. She had work to do.
She had promised Tolek she would use the ship’s library computer to search out serial killings and unexplained deaths among Vulcan populations in a given age cohort over the previous decade. The task might have been daunting to a less thorough individual, but Saavik approached it as she did all things, patiently and meticulously, and with the assistance of the most complete database in the Federation.
If she was disturbed by the sheer varieties of unnatural ways a Vulcan could die even in this most civilized of times—shooting, stabbing, strangulation, poisoning, burns, falls, vehicle accidents that might not have been accidental, and the most elusive Unknown—she gave no outward sign. She scanned countless documents seemingly without tiring, her expression remaining serene regardless of the horrors flitting across the screen.
At the end of each shift, she sent her findings to Tolek via subspace, for whatever use he might make of them. Not surprisingly, she had not yet found a correlation with the three deaths he had described to her.
“That’s because you still don’t entirely believe they were murdered,” Tolek said.
They were on a live feed, most likely the last until her mission on Deema III was complete. His tone was lighter than it had been when they’d met face-to-face, almost teasing, as it had been when they were children. Before Saavik could protest that her approach was both logical and objective—as he knew she would—he asked, “What about the Heliopolis murders?”
Despite the plethora of material she had scanned thus far, Saavik’s recall was almost instantaneous.
“Negative. The victims were all female, and all were stabbed. The ten killings were later correlated with serial killings on several other worlds, beginning on Earth almost four centuries ago, and culminating in the destruction of a being identified as Redjac.”
“You see why this is helpful?” Tol
ek said, a mix of fascination with the study itself and disappointment in its results evident in his tone. “All I had access to was the name ‘Heliopolis’ and some docudramas whose content was mostly supposition. That level of detail is not available outside of Starfleet files.”
Logical, Saavik thought, since the last in the series of murders occurred aboard a Starfleet vessel, and there had been some official concern at the time about potential copycat killings. What particular twist of mind, she wondered, compelled anyone to want to commit such crimes?
“I’ve read through everything you have sent me thus far …” Tolek was saying. Ambient light in the lab on night shift came only from the readouts and specimen cases. The voice in Saavik’s earpiece was inadvertently intimate, almost secretive, resonating with their childhood meetings in the air duct. “And I continue to try to make contact with the other survivors. There seem to have been no further deaths beyond the initial three. I had thought to communicate with the others, as I did with you, and suggest they undergo medical examination.”
Saavik frowned. “For what purpose?”
“To eliminate the possibility that some might also be undergoing the beginnings of the multiple organ failure that killed Lerius and the others,” Tolek said, but Saavik knew him too well, even after all this time.
“And also to bring the plight of the dead to the attention of the general public,” she suggested dryly.
“Well …”
“Which might have the effect, if they were in fact murdered, of alerting the killer or killers to our awareness. Is this necessarily a good thing?”
She waited for him to consider the possible ramifications. “I hadn’t thought of that. Again, this is why I need your help. But what if the killer is already stalking another victim? Do we not have an obligation to warn the others?”
“Warn them of what?” Saavik asked, not for the first time. “Perhaps we have found no correlation among the three deaths because there is no correlation to find.”
There was a long silence. Finally Tolek said, “You may be correct. Forgive me, but I cannot shake this … intuition. At least on Hellguard one could recognize the enemy in the sun, the predators, the hunger. Here it is like being pursued by shadows. And you are the only one who understands …”
Suddenly aware that she was not alone, Saavik waited for Tolek to finish his thought. At the same time, she rotated her chair a few degrees to the left to give herself a wider view of the lab behind her. A glimpse of multicolored Tiburonian robes told her all she needed to know. She wondered why he was eavesdropping, even as she wondered if his overlarge ears were as sensitive as her own. When she glanced away from the comscreen again, he was gone.
“Tolek,” she said, “once we reach our destination, I can continue to send you data packets sporadically, but live communication—”
“—will be impossible,” Tolek finished for her. “I understand. Pity. I’ve enjoyed our reacquaintance. And while I’m grateful you’re offplanet and safe from this predator, I also look forward to your return.”
As Saavik wondered what to say to that, he added, “May your journey be safe and your mission successful,” and logged off before she could say anything by way of farewell to him.
“Boyfriend?” said a familiar voice behind her.
Startled, she leaped from her chair, in full Romulan attack mode, and it took more than a veneer of Vulcan civilization to keep her from lunging at his throat. So he had continued to lurk even after she thought he was gone! How dare he?
“Sorry!” Mikal said, hands raised defensively, stepping back out of range of her ferocity. “I meant no harm. I’d forgotten your species bonds in childhood … and I should probably shut up now.”
“Indeed!” she said tightly. “Is there a purpose to your presence here?”
He tucked his hands into his flowing sleeves and bowed his head, looking almost sheepish.
“I just wanted to invite you to join us. You spend all your free time alone and—”
“—and I am content to do so.” She had toggled off the screen displaying the data she’d sent to Tolek, but not quickly enough.
“Serial killings?” Mikal asked, apparently able to sight-read almost as quickly as a Vulcan. “Unusual hobby.”
“It is research,” Saavik snapped, glowering.
“And I’ve made you angry again. Noli me tangere. I’ll try not to bother you again.”
He was gone in a flurry of robes and rapid footsteps. Saavik had been concerned about how she was to follow Captain Mironova’s order not to let him out of her sight. She had not anticipated having to hold him at arms’ length for the entire mission.
Mironova had watched Mikal slip out of the crew lounge, even as she had watched him flirt with every female crew member since he’d come aboard. Only Saavik had not reciprocated. Mikal had that effect on women, she knew. Her own memories were far enough in the past for their sharp edges to have worn away, and whatever feelings she retained toward him now were more maternal than romantic. It was the motherless child about him that had attracted her to Mikal in the first place, and she’d learned too late that it was not enough.
Saavik, she was confident, would be impervious to such emotions.
Mironova found herself grown too quiet in the raucous merriment of the crew lounge, and ordered another round of drinks to mask her mood.
The Scotch was warm at the back of her throat, but her mood remained.
T’Saan had given Tolek specific instructions not to contact her directly unless the matter was urgent. As he was about to go far afield to track down the remaining survivors, he took the risk.
“I should like to cease communication with Saavik even before her return,” he said. “I am not confident our communication is secure even on Starfleet frequencies. The meeting in the marketplace could have been ascribed to chance, but for us to meet again—”
“—would be far more natural than for you to suddenly sever all connection after such a fortuitous encounter,” T’Saan said with a touch of impatience. “You came to us, remember. You may as easily depart.”
“You used me,” he suggested, coolly but not without rancor, “and compelled me to make use of Saavik.” That he was complicit in that usage—he hadn’t mentioned to Saavik that Lerius’s kinswoman was a member of the V’Shar, or that it had been he who approached her, not the other way around—he left unspoken. “Starfleet could as easily have given us the data we needed without implicating her.”
“You forget yourself. For one, there is no ‘we.’ You are not a member of the V’Shar …”
“… except when you find me useful.”
“Kroykah!” she said, and he subsided.
“Do not overestimate your importance or mine, or even that of the V’Shar,” T’Saan said after a very long silence. “There are some things that must appear to outworlders as being less significant than they truly are.”
“In other words, the V’Shar does not ask Starfleet for favors.”
“Precisely.”
Now it was Tolek’s chance to be silent. T’Saan waited. She knew from long experience that he had further concerns.
“I am, as you have pointed out, not one of you. Therefore I am not skilled at concealing my intentions. Can the V’Shar provide me with cover as I complete this final phase?”
“You want a trained operative at your back, in the event you are followed?”
“Precisely.”
T’Saan’s answer surprised him. “No.”
“I see. So I am expendable?”
“Not entirely. But the thought that you might be will teach you greater caution.”
With that she terminated the connection. Tolek found he was shivering, though not from cold.
She’s betrothed, you idiot! Mikal castigated himself as he hurried away from the lab, furious with himself for being caught lurking. They all are in childhood. Her husband, future husband—what does it matter either way?—is who she spends her evenings talking to whil
e you’re carousing with the crew. It’s clear she’s devoted to him, and it’s wrong for you to even think what you’re thinking! Why can’t you content yourself with Graana or Jaoui or even Cheung for all her sarcasm or any of the other unattached females aboard, or for once just be professional? Why must you always want what you cannot have?
He knew the answer as he knew himself. His early life had taught him painfully that what was out of reach was by its very nature that much more desirable. But was that the only reason he couldn’t get Saavik out of his mind?
Curse Galina anyway, for replacing that giggly and entirely too accessible Denobulan Eyris with this solemn, unattainable elf-queen with the haunted look behind her eyes!
And curse yourself, you posturing buffoon! he thought, for thinking you ever had a chance to be anything more than that to the likes of her …
Five
They watched on the live feed above one metropolis as a group of Deemanot went about their daily lives on the planet below, greeting each other, if one were to judge from their posture as they met in passing, stopped their wormlike creeping to raise themselves, using the clitellum as a kind of temporary foot, and touching their eyeless faces to each other (sniffing, kissing, communing telepathically? Impossible to tell) before going their separate ways.
“This is what we should be studying, Saavik, not rocks and trees,” Mikal said, not for the first time. “There are ways of studying indigenous populations without being detected. I know—I’ve done it!”
“And yet you requested this mission, knowing that first contact was expressly forbidden,” she pointed out.
“Rapamycin,” he said cryptically, then began his data gathering. “Scanning Biome 1. Predominantly perennial grassland interspersed with eroded volcanic outcroppings. Grasses are fed by groundwater year-round, and preliminary scan suggests several hundred varieties …” For the first time since he’d beamed aboard, he was all seriousness. “Volcanic stria should provide easy access to a range of mineral and soil varieties across the planet’s life cycle.”
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